The study of the development of the herring, of which the following pages contain the first results, was commenced at the beginning of last August. At that time I went to a small fishing village called Sea Houses, North Sunderland, on the Northumbrian coast, and obtained a large number of herring ova, which I fertilised artificially on glass plates when on board a herring boat off the Longstone Lighthouse.

In entering upon the consideration of a subject so important, one cannot but feel surprised at the very general obscurity which envelops a question upon which so large a mass of accurate detail has been collected. In looking for the cause of this unsatisfactory state of affairs, it would appear to be due to a lack of appreciation by one set of workers, of the methods pursued by another, and this in two directions. In the first place, the student of normal cell life relegates aberrant vital processes entirely to the domain of pure pathology; whilst the pathologist, relying mainly on organs as a whole for his views on function, normal and abnormal, is apt to ignore the value of the study of the cell processes as carried on under normal conditions.

The shells of certain molluscs which are obtainable on the seashore between tides are seen to be more or less coloured green. I have noticed a fine rich colour on the operculum of a Turbo from the Pacific Ocean, which had been killed and the shell preserved dry. The shell has a high polish, the colour is the rich green of an ivy leaf, and the pigment is contained in the shell material. When the mollusc dies, and the shell is left exposed to air, light, and water, the green becomes a brownish-yellow colour. Some specimens of spirit, which had been poured off shells and fragments of coral obtained by dredging in deep waters, were examined by me for Mr J. T. Buchanan.

The forms of the uniaxial systems may be regarded as derived from forms, or parts of forms or combinations, of the regular system by uniform expansion or contraction in a direction parallel to the axis of the uniaxial system, i.e., normal to a face of the cube for the tetragonal, and normal to a face of the octahedron for the hexagonal system. Faces, therefore, which are, in the regular form or combination, at right angles to or parallel to such axis, retain their relative angular position unchanged in the uniaxial form or combination, and can be represented by means of indices referring to the rectangular axes of the regular system, whatever be the amount of the deformation (expansion or contraction). These faces are prism faces, parallel to the axis, and basal faces at right angles to it. All other faces have their angular position affected by the deformation.

The majority of recent investigations have concluded that the thickening of the rim of the blastoderm, and the new layer which is derived from it, is brought about by a true invagination of the segmented blastoderm. On the other hand, Klein and Kupffer hold that the newly formed layer is not derived from the segmented blastoderm (archiblast), but is mainly produced from an unsegmented portion of the blastoderm (parablast), which is intermediate in position between the archiblast and the yolk.

A very considerable number of earthworms have been referred to the genus Lumbricus, and its immediate allies Dendrobœna, Allolobophora, &c, which have in reality no marked affinities with any of these genera. Such are, for example, Lumbricus corethrurus of Fritz Müller, which Perrier has shown to belong to a distinct generic type described by him under the name of Urochœta, and Lumbricus microchœta of Rapp, which is also the type of a new genus, widely differing from Lumbricus proper. On the other hand, a very large number of species have been referred to the latter genus, concerning which there is little or no knowledge, so that it is impossible to speak with any certainty as to their exact systematic position.

The second, only, of two short papers which I communicated to the Society a month ago, on points connected with the Kinetic Theory of gases, took account of the greater probability of collision between two particles as their relative speed is larger. I propose now to calculate the effect of this consideration on the results of my first paper.

In January I read a paper on the salinity of the Firth of Forth, in which the law governing the distribution of salt in that estuary was pointed out. It appeared that in the eastern or seaward part of the Firth the change in mean salinity per mile was very slight, and the tidal range was small, while both decreased gradually as the sea was approached. On the other hand, the riverward half of the Firth showed a rapid alteration in density along its length, and a correspondingly great range between high and low tide.

The various forms of apparatus employed for procuring samples of water from beneath the surface are either designed to take up as a sample a mixture of the water in a certain vertical range, or to secure their entire charge at one definite position. The former description of water-bottle has been used almost invariably in deepsea work; the latter is necessary only in shallow water.

In connection with the observations carried on by one of us on the salinity and temperature of estuaries, it seemed desirable to examine the condition of the water near the mouth of a river flowing directly into the sea. For this purpose it was necessary to select a stream of considerable volume and free from pollution.

In a memoir published in the Chemical News, vol. xlviii. Page 37, and the Journal of the Chemical Society, 1884, page 94, I gave some account of a peculiar excretory product found in the Sepia's “liver.”The product was found to be albumin in pseudo-crystalline aggregations when examined under the microscope. These bodies are not of a constant occurrence in this organ of the Sepia. Since the publication of the above paper, which is a year and a half ago, I have made a thorough examination of this organ in Sepia, which substaniate and extend the observations of Krukenberg, Fredericq, and Jousset de Bellesme.